The Call of the West

The (all of the
Wide open spaces, spirited
horses, unbridled
weather, and three huge
meals a day. This is real
freedom-ifyou can
take it. By Tracy Young
.
he call of the West, like :l dog whistle
pitched a\ a decibel level beyond buman hc:uing, cOllies shrouded ill silence. Early in the Illorning. the only
sound is the creaking of saddle leather as
yOLi pick your way along a stream where
beavers havr.: left their h:lIldiworkSlumps thaI look like sharpcl1l.:d pellcil:;. At
the top of a ridge, a f.1mil)' of elk poses,
Iloses in the air, moving olT when they
hear the borses blow and snort. The birds
(lee, screaming; then I.:vcrythi.l1g is quiet.
In the West, where it is possible to scm till.:
horizon and sct.: nothing but raw space for
miles anc! miks, where yOll afC ellveloped
by nature, the emptiness feels intimate.
T
Qut here, the image of thc-cartb-J.s-Illother i~ lJIDrC thall ;l diche. And with yom
legs around a horse. such fil;ures of speech
have 31l even more primitive power.
As Ronald Re3gan said ill 3 moment of
lucidity: "Tht:re's nOlhing betler (or the illsidt'S of 3 111311 U1311 tile OL1l'iidc of a 110rsc." >
PHOTOGHAPJ-IS UY KUHT MARKUS
The (011 of theWID
nu: West WdS filII offellces IIml fecilyards 11011'.
croll/ded with calflraders ami jl/llft'S brokers, college boys II,/ID did,,', know tI Herrfiml
from (III AIl~llS, aud m"c1I1:rs lvllO COllllllltlt'd
.from LOlldoll or rill' SOIlI" oj Frtlllce..:....-mltl
wJ/(/teller tile mOllies ol/re promised, Illere was
l/o/lllllell c/WI/(C, ill (/ slwwdolll/l, for" IleTa (111
illl"lS
(l
IlOrsc-jlllll: Krmllcr, '['II(: uul COWllC))~
If yOll stop to remember that the cowboy
t.'lIlpirc was founded on bwksSIlCSS, 011
rustled callie and stolen bnd. the gcntrilic;llion of the AmnicJn West becomes :l
pcculi:uly Anu:ric:m tr:lgcdy, shot through
with irOllic asides. Consider the story of
one old Montana ranching r."(lllily. staullch
Ikpublic:tllS all, who lrictl growing IllarijU;\lI:l ill;l dCSpcTJlC attempt to pay off their
debts, only to get caught in a squeczc play
betwecn the Mafia ;ll1d thc Feds.
llut the myth of tile West is lllOTC powerful than the reality-and devoid of irony. It may be what got Reagan elected.
Surely it is what attracts some people to
dude ranches. Catering to the child ill liS,
that savage innocenl who is as tcnacious as
allY old hand about hanging on to the past,
dude rallches may be the only C.-unily
spreads to survive.
Thc Bittcrroot Hanell, however, is not
your ordinary dude rallch. There is 110
Olympic-sized swimming pool. No allwcather tCllnis courts. No ninc-holc golf
cOllrse. No hot tub. No S:UIIl:l. No video
arcade with Shoot-Em-Up-Cowboys-NInjulls. No authelllic Old Wt:st Trading
Post selling German-silver belt buckles
with your name in briat script. The Bitterroot Ranch, when you comc right down
to it, h3s less in common with a traditional
dude ranch than it does with something
more modern. say, Outward Bound. And
the survival course begins thc momcnt
}'ou land in j3ckson Hole, Wyoming.
Looked upon with a certain amount of
scorn by leathery locals who rcgard it as a
theme park, Jackson Hole can nonethek'Ss
present all sorts of challenges to a visitor. It
is surrounded by moulltains-the Tetolls
10 the Wt.'St. the Absarokas to the north,
the Gras Ventre Hange to the cast-so
".
pJant.'S do not so much land 3S fall frolll the
sky. It also boasts some of the steepest ski
slopc:.-s in North America. Even Ihe town
proper, laid out in a square like :I Monopoly board, inspirt.'S fcats of endurance: outfitting yourself, from the crown of a ncw
StCtSOll to the silver tips of a pair uf custom-made boots, you call literally shop 'til
you drop.
From jackson, it's usually a two-hour
drive to Dubois, the closest lown to the
Bitterrool. so my travding companion
and I turned in carl y al the Antler Motel.
half-druggcd all a dinner of barbequed
ribs. At seven the next morning, as we
nosed out onto the long highway that
stretches, straight as a pin, from JacksQII
up to Yellowstollc, it was snowing lightly,
all occurrCllce, wc were laid, lIot unusual
for early Scptember. Mountain weather.
Through the Clr windows, scencry flashed
by like film frames: rolling plains, clumps
of purplish sagebrush. a cowboy in a
bright-yellow slickcr sharp against the
graying sky. "Look at this," I crowcJ...It's
like Ihe West."
"It is Ihe West," my TC said.
And so, at IOllg last, it was.
I
t is comlllon, l'm told, for people to experience a sense of deja vu when they
visit the Pyramids. 11m! the S:UllC feeling that da)' in W)'Omillg. I was. I fclt
wilh a deep tlll11111 of psychic satisfaction,
home. In retrospcct it makt.'S sense that my
blood would run backwards. My maternal
grandparcllls came from "out Wesl," JS
they called it, from sheep Emus in Ut:lh.
And years later, even aflcr they had raised
:l f.1l1lily and h:ld bcconfe pillars of a tJIllC
suburban COllllllullity, if 1I0t totally assimilated by it, they still rctained a whilT of the
exotic. When) was a child, Ill)' f.worite
Slories were the olles my grandmother
told lIle, of the horse she had ridden as a
girl and of Ihc Indian who followcd her
home one night. My prized possessiun
was an Indian blankct that she had traded.
she said. for :l set of pencils. (Like many
westerners, she was utterly direct, but
equally prone to tall tales.)
Happily lost ill reverie, I haclll'tnoticed
that the snOw was f.11lillg harder, glazing
the :lsphalt, and the road "vas curling back
and forth on ilself as we headed up the
Togwotee PJSS, neJrly tCll-lhousand feet
at its summit. "These brah'S don't work at
till," my friend said.
I looked OUI the bJck window just ill
time to see Ihe car behind liS spin and slam
into tin: mountain. To our right. lost in the
fog, w.as the valley somewhere far, fJr bt."low. "Why arc you hanging OlltO that
door handle?" my friend llIuttered, hands
frozen to the steering wheel.
I knew we were going to die; I just
didn't know whell. And by the time we
pulled into Dubois, we were long overdue
for a miraclc. The miracle was that thc doHut shop was open; the dowllsidc, that we
still had thirty miles of bad road before we
rcaclu.:d Ihe ranch. Two and a half hours
later. and JlmOSl too Crozcn with despair to
notice a coyolc perform a perfect extended
Irot across the lundra, we skidded across a
woodell bridge, past a small corral, and
parked in frail I Or:l low-slung and utterly
unprepossessing lodgc. "l3oy-o-boy," I
said. banging snow from my sllcJkers. "I
bet they'll be glad to scc liS."
Mel and BaY:lrd Fox, the owners of the
l3iuerroot Ranch, arc not Wyoming nalives, but their rools arc as romantic and as
lough as they cOllie. Mel, a weathered,
bo)'ishly lean blond, was raisc:.-d all her
family's farm in Kenya; Bayard, a dead
ringer for the Marlboro mall except Ihat he
doesn't smoke, grew up Ilear Philadelphia.
wellt to Yale and, it was whispered, had
worked for the CIA. This marriage betwcen alit of Afti((l :lnd G. Gordoll Liddy's
Will goes a long W3Y toward explaining
why they hadn't been parlicularly worried
about the dangers we had faced-and
weren't particularly impressed that we had
tumed up unscathed.
"He thinks we're sissies," my friend said
from beneath a mountain of covers whcn
Some people experience
deja Vtl wbell tbey visit
tbe Pyramids. I bad tbat
feelillg ill Wyomillg
we had bcdded down for the night.
") know," I said, turning out my light.
And thinking what fun it would be to take
lbyartl for a quick spin 011 the "A" train, I
fell asleep.
Like aU good Emtasics. the myth of the
West is a costume drama, so thc next
Illorning, I got up so carly it was still dark.
cook a hot bath. and began what was to
becolllc a morning ritual. Rub Aspcrcrcme
on Ill)' kgs. Tape the insides of my knees
with moleskin. Dress: long johns. Ihermal
socks, jeans, chaps. turtleneck, vcst, jacket. h:I(, slicker-the whole cowboy kit.
I
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Looking like one of the Young Guns, I
strode off to the lodge to indulge in the
kind ofbrcakf,1.st yOll can cat without feeling guilty only WhCll you know you're in
for a long haul.
When I got down to the end of the road,
I saw, a couple ofcowboys ill sweat-stained
chaps and dirty dusters ride out of the mist
and across the wooden bridge, their dog
trailing after them. They dismounted,
hitched their horses, and :ullbkd up onto
the porch, where tltey slood, shifting frolll
foot to foot, trying to keep thcir droopy
mustaches out of thcir corlce.
It was an ineffably romantic pictureand something of a sartorial revelation. If
real cowboys, for practic:ll reasons, make a
fetish of gear, they don't dress like folks
wcancd on ·the movies. Real cowboys, it
seems, don't wear Levi's, much less Girbaud jeans; they wear Wrangler's, probably because they break in f,1.ster and don't
chafe at the scams. Real cowboys don't
wear thousand doll:lr Lucchese ostrich
boots like you buy at Dilly M:lrtin's 011
Madison A venue; they wear Packer boots,
:l str-mge hybrid of work boot and cowboy boot that lace up the frollt, arc cheap
:lnd comfortable, and were impossible to
find in the East ulltil Hunting World
caught on. Real cowboys wear spurslong-shanked, rowcleu, dripping withjingle-bobs. And real cowboy hats look like
something the dog used for a whelping
box. Only slightly chastened, I went inside
to meet the other guests.
Given the rugged surroulldingsbounded on one side by the Shoshone National ForeSt, all the other by tbe Wind
River Indian Reservation, the Bitterroot
comprises about one-hundred square
acres, thirteen gllest cabins, a main lodge,
a few out buildings, anti some corralsand given the f.1.ct that Mel and llayard arc
avid horsemen, the ranch tcnds to attract
two kinds of visitors: Europeans smitten
by Americana, Americans fed up with Europe. Both are serious abollt riding, but
skill is another matter. One equestricnne,
impeccably turned out in glossy dress
boots and fresh nail polish, was put off by
the bulky western s:lddle and illStructions
to keep her mount on a loose rein. "How
the hell arc you supposed to make contact
with the horse?" she said, snapping her
crop. Another guest, whom we installlly
nicknamed "Bubbles," informed us that
she had a "perfect se:lt." Which she did, by
Rubens's stal1d:lrJs. .nut her relationship to
the saddle W:lS a distant one at best. Wallgicy-rOtlg, walig-icy-rotlg, off she went, listing
d:lngeroLlsly to port.
What we aU soon discovered was that it
is one thing to callter flgurC eights around
a ring, and 'Illite another altogether to follow .nayard on a trail ride into the hills. "I
hate to go with him," Mel said in one of
her rare confidences. "He has two
speeds-walk and all-out."
So whcn Bayard announced, over dinner one night, that he was leading all aUday excursion lltat would require expert
riding ability or, lacking that, dumb determination, our solution, being qualified ill
neither category, was to drive part of the
way. The next morning my TC and I
loaded ollr saddles into the car trunk and
watched the rest of the posse c1aller ofT
over the bridge, ponying our horses.
e arrived at the meeting pbce. We
saddled our horses and took ofT
across a pasture studded with sagebrush, forded a swollell stream,
plunged up tile far bank, and cantered until
we reached the edge of the woods and a
long trail that wound twelve-thousand feet
up the mountain. At moments, trotting
among trees that shot a hundred feel into
the bright air, and dappled with sunlight
that streamed through the tangle oflcaves,
it was like riding in an enormous cathedral. At mOlllellts, mincillH aloug a trail so
narrow that a misstep would spell disaster,
it W:lS like riding on the edge of the earth. I
figured out the essential difTercllce between driving a car alld riding a horse: I
had placed Illy complete trust in Lhe :lIlin1:l1
W
1
underneath me.
Which was :l very good thing indeed.
As we neared the uppermost ridge, the
trail swooped gently, and the horses broke
into a canter. At the very top, tbe trail
broke sharply to the left. Careening
around the curve, we skidded to :l hah,
inches from the overhang. We tied our
horses and flopped down all the grass to
share sandwiches, fruit, cookies, and
Snickers bars. The dogs tumbled together
like clothes ill a dryer. Bayard fell asleep,
legs splayed, battered hat over his f,1Ce.
Spread out below us, like a Panavision
shot from a Johll Ford movie, was the valley th:lt we had traversed hours before.
Soon the wind carne up, making the
horses fuss at their tethers, so we checked
our tack and headed home, back down
trails so steep at times our knees ached and
we were forced to get off and lead our
horses. On level ground we made time,
stopping only to let the horses drink at the
stream; thell forging across, whipped by
gusts, we cantered f,1ster and faster, until
we were galloping :l crazy zigzag through
the tall bushes that dotted the field. Too
exhilarated tu fed terrified, I was willing to
slow down only when we came to a thicket of woods alld a ragged herd of cows.
Our horses, many of them cow ponies,
gave chase, crashiug through the underbrush, leaping over logs, scattering the
cows which looked annoyed, and a bit bewildered by all the fllSs.
By the time we end<..-d up back at ollr
car, unsaddled the horses, and opened>
The (oil of the wm
the door for the fat old Lab who sprawk-d
out exhausted 011 the back SCJ.t, even
B:\yard's thirst for recklessness had been
sated. "You're terrific," he said to Illy
friend. who had come the whole way
loaded down with call1eras. "When those
guys frol11 Leo Bumcu come out here to
shoot the Marlboro ads, they don't even
get out of their jeep...
here's routine in every life. which is
exactly what people arc ahl/3Ys tryillg
to escape, but the rhythm of the
ranch-organized ;uolll1d our basic
lH..'cds :Iud those oCthe other animals-was
about as ho-hullI, and as purifying. as
breathing. Every day we would wake
shortly after dawn, and lie in bed listening
to the horses daner down from the high
pasture. Dress. Eat a huge brcakf3St: griddle Clkc.'S. sausage, eggs, juice, and black
coffee. Ride allmoming. Eat a huge lunch:
meat, vegetables, bread, salad, dessert, and
more cofT<.."C. Ride aLi afternoon. Stagger
imo the lodgc for mulled wine or co(fee. A
quick nap or a hot bath. Eat a huge dinner: more mc.at, more vegetables, JIlorc
bread, more salad, morc t1esserr, still
more coffee, and maybe ;lOocher dessert. By nine it would be bedtimc aud
sleep stirred by dreams where you
would pitch and rotl as if you were still
011 horseback.
Riding seven hours a day, every day,
doesn't give your muscles time to stiffcn
up, and by midweek even the worst of us
were in some kind of physical shape. By
the wt-ck's end, our psyches had become
similarly aligned. It seemed the kind of life
that could make yOll hard-in the way
Georgia O'KeefTe was hard, stripped of
triviality. Or hard likc my grandmother,
who had no patience for peLS because she
believed that animals belonged outside,
but who pulled a radiator our of the w;11I to
rescue a struggling runt the night our dog
had a litter all oyer the living room.
Mel had a little bit of
both women in her. She
loved her animals in a
straightforward way, unsweetened by sentimcnt;
she merely toleratcd Illost
pt'Ople. So I was startled
when, on our last night at
the ranch, she suggested
we might have time before
we left to take a ride on the
Roller Coaster. I had heard
all about the Roller Coaster
from a friend who'd been
T
t
176
at the Bitterroot a fcw years earlier. It was.
she said, the Illost hair-raising ride she'd
ever taken: a dead rUlI 011 a trail laid out
like the Cyclone :n Coney Island.
"Don't UJ0rT)' about it." said my traveling companion as we finished packing.
''1'111 not worried, exactly," I said. "I
was, however, about to congratulate myself on spending a week here without
brcakillg anything."
"You think too IlIlIch," she said.
Prudence. as 1 had beell discoyering all
week, has its pbce-but Wyoming isn't
it. The next Illorning. after an unusually
light breakf.lst, we saddled up. As we rode
off, I consoled myself with the thought
chat had comforted IIIC so lllany times be-
I bad beard all about tbe
Roller Coaster-a dead
rull 011 a trail like tbe
Cyclolle at COlley Islalld
fore: I l11:ly not know what rill doing. but
my horse, Muddy, surely must.
The Roller Coaster was about a mile
(rolll the ranch, down a 10llg winding dirt
road, through a pasture where the yearlings danced over to greet us, nipping our
horscs 011 the flanks. thell mincing away
with great Aourishes ofthdr tails. We cantcrcd across the pasture 10 loosen up. It
was a great da}'-Sulll1y, wetly warm like
spring-and soon we arrived at the crest
of a series of hills and gazl'd down upon a
strange moonscape of porous rock which
rose and feU like enormous waves.
Mel pulled up and craned around. "The
faster the horses go," she s:lid, "the more
they enjoy it." I grabbed a hank of
Muddy's lIlane in my left hand, the rcins
ill Illy right, and let alit a whoop, which
froze in Illy mouth as we hurtled down till:
first drop, pitched at all angle so stct.:p Ill)'
stol1l;lch was left ill the
lurch. Before I could draw
a breath, we shot strjight
up, whipped around a hairpin curve, plunged back
down. another hairpin
tum, and right back up.
Mel sat grinning at the top.
"That was it?" I yelled.
"That was it." Mel said,
with a nim of a smile. I had
earned my SpUTS. Now I
was anxious 10 try it all
over again.
"O"ce ,ll;S (01/1"'1 gets iI/side YOII alltl lakcs
'IOIel," (/ bllck/lroo remarked 1"lIife we IVt'rr
'rai/jug COli'S 011 /l road Clmjug tfcross ludepcudeHU Valley, "you //lay never fit ill ''''ywhcre
else. "- Kurt A1arklls, Buckaroo
By the time our planc landed at Newark I
felt like I had died. Waiting for a cab at the
airport, my TC and I watched two thieves
run 00" with another passenger's baggage.
Back on the streets of Gn..'Cnwich Village,
still wearing my Stetsoll, I was jeered at by
a grollp of teenagers in imitation Vuiuoll
pullman-porter caps. It is always depressing to be back in New York City; this
time it was cyen more so. What struck IlIC
was chat the G~1l oftne West addresscd our
sense of entitlement to the land. In New
York City the outdoors is the province of
the dispossessed.
Uut the call of the West is more than
real-estate's siren howl; it whispers of ambition tallled by nature; it promises so few
options [hat [he self is libcr.1ted. A few
years ago whell I returned from Egypt, I
was convinccd that lO continue living as I
had been was to be confined, crushed Ulldt.:r a stack of wrong priorities. Tht.: feeling
f.'lded in a matter of weeks. This time it
didn't.
In -r!l(, SOlllceOJOpCtI SpOCl'S, Gretel Ehrlidl writcs: "When I am ill New York but
feeling lonely for Wyoming, I look for the
Marlboro ads in the subway." All wintcr I
stared at those subway ads, checking the
horst'S' tack. imagining that if I wcre back
in Wyoming I'd bc on my wa)' to a cattle
drive instead of therapy. I read cowboy
h:llldbooks at night and bored l11y friends
with newfound lore, like how to stOp a
stampede. ("Very useful at rush hour," a
colleague said helpfully.) By day I ordered
catalogs frolll farm supplit.:rs and tack
shops, window-shopping pig creep feedcrs alld stockmen's inselllin:itiOIl kits. illlt
it's hard to be a cowgirl in the city: whcnl
called to inquire about a western saddle for
a horst.: I had decided to buy, I was told
that the nearest distributor was a punk
boutiquc in SoHo.
Gne night, my traveling companion
and I had dinner with a young woman we
had met at the ranch. Looking sheepish in
her lady-lawyer drag. she speared a shrinlp
and sighed. "I've been going back there for
thrt"c years now." she said. ") figured that
the morc onen I went, the easier it would
be to give up.
.. And is it?" I asked.
"Nope," Shc rolled her cyes. "It gcts
worse." mI
It
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